Is email useless?
Open Thread: The value and quality of email at work | 43 Folders
I love email for personal uses, and my home based business. I hate it for my work. I usually get 50-150 emails per day. A good deal of them are automaticlly generated by one software system or another. Others are procedurally generated. When I finish certain processes I have to email the group and let them know it is finished.
Another chunk are semi-interesting internal team emails. Doughnut notices and the like.
There are usually 10-20 forwarded emails or links to interesting websites.
Then there are 3-4 notices regarding procedure changes or clearifications.
Another 1-3 may be actual items that I need to take action on.
Overall, I think the email system as it is used in most companies is archaic and ripe for replacement. I would much rather see blogs and RSS feeds for a lot of these items. Especially the critical items that people want me to see... It is just too difficult to sort through 100 emails to find 5 that matter.